Charm-Quark Production in Deep-Inelastic Neutrino Scattering at Next-to-Next-to-Leading Order in QCD

We present a fully differential next-to-next-to-leading order calculation of charm-quark production in charged-current deep-inelastic scattering, with full charm-quark mass dependence. The next-to-next-to-leading order corrections in perturbative quantum chromodynamics are found to be comparable in size to the next-to-leading order corrections in certain kinematic regions. We compare our predictions with data on dimuon production in (anti)neutrino scattering from a heavy nucleus. Our results can be used to improve the extraction of the parton distribution function of a strange quark in the nucleon.National Natural Science Foundation (China) (Grant No. 11375013)National Natural Science Foundation (China) (Grant No. 11135003)United States. Dept. of Energy (Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357)United States. Dept. of Energy. Office of Nuclear Physics (U.S. DOE Contract No. DE-SC0011090

Efficient generation of relativistic near-single-cycle mid-infrared pulses in plasmas

Ultrashort intense optical pulses in the mid-infrared (mid-IR) region are very important for broad applications ranging from super-resolution spectroscopy to attosecond X-ray pulse generation and particle acceleration. However, currently, it is still difficult to produce few-cycle mid-IR pulses of relativistic intensities using standard optical techniques. Here, we propose and numerically demonstrate a novel scheme to produce these mid-IR pulses based on laser-driven plasma optical modulation. In this scheme, a plasma wake is first excited by an intense drive laser pulse in an underdense plasma, and a signal laser pulse initially at the same wavelength (1 micron) as that of the drive laser is subsequently injected into the plasma wake. The signal pulse is converted to a relativistic multi-millijoule near-single-cycle mid-IR pulse with a central wavelength of ~5 microns via frequency-downshifting, where the energy conversion efficiency is as high as approximately 30% when the drive and signal laser pulses are both at a few tens of millijoules at the beginning. Our scheme can be realized with terawatt-class kHz laser systems, which may bring new opportunities in high-field physics and ultrafast science

Optical puff mediated laminar-turbulent polarization transition

Various physical structures exhibit a fundamentally probabilistic nature over diverse scales in space and time, to the point that the demarcation line between quantum and classic laws gets blurred. Here, we characterize the probability of intermittency in the laminar-turbulence transition of a partially mode-locked fiber laser system, whose degree of coherence is deteriorated by multiple mode mixing. Two competing processes, namely the proliferation and the decay of an optical turbulent puff, determine a critical behavior for the onset of turbulence in such a nonlinear dissipative system. A new kind of polarization rogue waves is introduced at the point of transition to polarization turbulence. The probabilistic description of the puff-mediated laminar-turbulence polarization transition provides an additional degree of freedom for our understanding of the complex physics of lasers

FOXE1 polyalanine tract length screening by MLPA in idiopathic premature ovarian failure

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>FOXE1 is one of the candidate genes for genetic predisposition to premature ovarian failure (POF) and it contains an alanine tract. Our purpose is to assess the influence of length of the alanine tract of FOXE1 on genetic susceptibility to POF.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The group studied consisted of 110 Chinese patients with idiopathic POF and 110 women from normal controls. The polyalanine tract and flanking sequence of FOXE1 was screened using the Multiple Ligation-dependent Probe Amplification (MLPA) technique and directly sequenced.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Three variants of FOXE1-polyalanine length, containing 12, 14, or 16 alanine residues, and 5 different genotypes were identified. There were significantly lower frequencies of the 14/14 genotypes in cases with POF (X2 = 119.73, P = 0.001), as compared with the controls. The incidence of 16/16 genotypes of FOXE1-polyalanine was significantly higher in patients with POF (X2 = 3.403, P = 0.001) in comparison to the controls. The FOXE1 14 alanine allele was significantly less common in the POF patient group (186/220) than the controls (216/220) (X2 = 25.923, P = 0.0001). The FOXE1 16 alanine allele was significantly more common in the POF patient group (28/220) than the controls (4/220) (X2 = 19.412, P = 0.0001).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This finding provides evidence that polyalanine repeat expansions in FOXE1 may be responsible for the genetic aetiology of POF in Chinese women.</p

Mapping transient electric fields with picosecond electron bunches

Transient electric fields, which are an important but hardly explored parameter of laser plasmas, can now be diagnosed experimentally with combined ultrafast temporal resolution and field sensitivity, using femtosecond to picosecond electron or proton pulses as probes. However, poor spatial resolution poses great challenges to simultaneously recording both the global and local field features. Here, we present a direct 3D measurement of a transient electric field by time-resolved electron schlieren radiography with simultaneous 80-Êm spatial and 3.7-ps temporal resolutions, analyzed using an Abel inversion algorithm. The electric field here is built up at the front of an aluminum foil irradiated with a femtosecond laser pulse at 1.9 × 1012 W/cm2, where electrons are emitted at a speed of 4 × 106 m/s, resulting in a unique gpeak.valleyh transient electric field map with the field strength up to 105 V/m. Furthermore, time-resolved schlieren radiography with charged particle pulses should enable the mapping of various fast-evolving field structures including those found in plasma-based particle accelerators